●Colombia plans to build a pilot ethanol plant in Cuba next year.It will be interesting to see if there will be furter decisions about ethanol on a larger scale.Raul Castro says Cuba needs more foreign investment; people who know this industry say it would be a winner for Cuba, and a shared-proceeds arrangement would attract foreign capital.Only problem is that Fidel Castro opposes it.Earlier discussion here.

●At Penultimos Dias, a link to what purports to be a price list for items newly approved for sale to Cubans in state retail stores.Markup: 130 percent.

●In Diario las Americas, economist Jorge Sanguinetty sees lots of significance in the recently published official survey of prices in the “informal” sector, discussed earlier here.He misses a few things – Pablo Alfonso did not break the story, the survey covers more than the black market, and this is not the first time that Cuba’s government has recognized the black market.But his speculation is interesting and he concludes that Cuba is on the verge of “a type of transition from an extreme form of totalitarianism toward another less suffocating form, but still totalitarian.”That’s progress, I guess.